Yes yes, the big idea is important. And yeah, its good be innovative. But maybe sometimes all you need is some existing functionality and a bunch of free stuff. People love free stuff. Via Crack Unit

A different kind of agency should have a different kind of website.
link via @michaelnobbs

I had dinner at the Albion the other night. The veggi menu options were frankly average – but the amazing cupcakes made up for it.

Thankfully, you can see exactly when a fresh batch has been taken out the oven, by following @albionsoven. A little gadget in their kitchen allows the baker to turn a dial, press a button, et viola. – tweet sent.

BakerTweet from POKE on Vimeo.

Kudos to poke for creating a arduino based kitchen friendly gadget, that builds the relationship between their client and the peckish users.

We went along to my favorite This Happened so far last night. Great venue in the bfi and some wonderful projects on show. Thought i’d share my highlights:

Glassworks (who offered me work experience back in the day, which i turned down, like a chump) showed their experimental project,
HeartWorks. Designed as a learning tool for students, Heartworks is a very accurate simulation of preforming and reading ultrasounds on the heart.
The team talked about the process they went through to model such a complex internal organ, and how the project may be changing the business that usually produces CG graphic for Film and TV. I think it’s pretty amazing that this team have been allowed to go off and do some thing totally experimental and so utterly different from the company’s main offering.

My highlight, however, was definatly michael cross and his scarily lowfi machine that allows you to walk on water. He igorned the fact that walking on water is impossible, and went and made it anyway. The result is beautiful, scary and rather brilliant.

How cool is this? Augmented reality t-shirts that pull in a twitter feed.

As both a knitter and a web / interactive stuff designer, i’m fascinated by the space between interaction design and craft.

Leah Buechley invented the lillypad (a kind squidgy version of the arduino), and in the talk below speaks about getting knitters and grannies and the like involved in innovation and interaction design.

Design Futures: Leah Buechley (MIT Media Lab) – New Craft – A Marriage of High and Low Tech from Elizabeth Goodman on Vimeo.

We are not quite at the point of getting my gran writing processing just yet, Leah admits, but i genuinely love the idea of technology as an extension of craft. Also a common theme of the work she shows seems to be exposing the circuit and making it part of the asthetic, see this flickr set on the paper circuit, or have a look at the things people are making with conductive embroidery.

Conductive embroidery from make magazine

Interactive paper

Just a quick note about the exciting things people spoke about at This Happened on Friday night.

This time around we were tucked away in the corner of the Tim Walker exhibition – (photos of multicoloured kittens and this really cool giant glove) at the Design Museum, which was good because we could see and hear everything.

Yuri Suzuki spoke about scalextric style record player, from his latest project “physical value of sound”. A little car with a needle on the underside followed a track made from recycled vinyl cut at 45 degree angles.

He combined the elements of two toys to create something that had a great tactile and playful quality. Would be great to see this taken further, with one car on vocals, one on drums etc. I think it would be great in-store in a trendy record shop or something. I liked the fact that he showed the last minute breakthroughs and the fact that they finally got it working about 4 days before the show!

Dominic Harris from Cinimod Studio spoke about making a UFO that flew over the Polish city of Gdansk.

Essentially a giant plate shaped thing dangling from a terrifyingly vintage helicopter covered in LED’s, the Gdansk UFO is a surreal and wondrous thing. To me it looks pretty magical. Apparently YouTubers agree, as many seem to think its a hoax!